Headspace: A gym membership for the mind

The RDA has partnered with Headspace to provide members with a free one-year subscription to their mindfulness app. This is part of the RDA Executive’s focus on improving the wellbeing of RMOs. Read RDA Exec President Sara Moeke’s letter about this initiative here >

Some of you may have already heard about Headspace – it’s a really good way to build some time out into your day and improve your resilience and calm.

Downloading the app and completing the first 10 sessions is free. Register at www.headspace.com, download the app from and you’re away!

Once you’ve completed your first 10 sessions, email us at headspace@nzrda.org.nz and we’ll send you a code and instructions to unlock your free one-year subscription.

More About Meditation

Meditation is a way to give your mind the time to pause, detach and re-energize in order to manage stress, increase happiness and boost productivity for sustainable high performance.

Research suggests that in-person Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs may help manage stress. In fact, a systematic review of 17 MBSR studies found the program to be effective in reducing psychological and physiological symptoms of stress.

A systematic review of in-person meditation training found that 69% of the studies analyzed showed meditation practice alleviated symptoms of anxiety.

A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials for insomnia found that eight weeks of in-person meditation training significantly improved total waking time and sleep quality in patients with insomnia.

A study evaluating the benefits of an in-person mindfulness-based relationship enhancement program suggests that mindfulness enhances couples’ levels of relationship satisfaction, autonomy, closeness and acceptance of each other, while reducing relationship distress.

Scientists investigated the effects of a brief in-person meditation training program on cognition and their findings suggest that meditating for just four days is enough to improve novice meditators’ working memory, executive functions and their ability to process visual information.